Woods Canyon Lake

Camping trip to Woods Canyon Lake coming up this week.
Wife punted due to unexpected stuff so I'm on full parole.

On the road to the campground (orange arrow) there looks to be a FSR of
sorts or a proper dirt road called Woods Canyon Lake Trail. (yellow offshoot)
Wide enough for a vehicle for sure.




Appears to have offshoot certainly large enough for turn around as well or setup at night for
some milky way images.



Anyone familiar with this little trail, or other points of interest where a milky-way-shot
would look good ??

Stock tires ok on this ??

 

Its all just dirt roads so stock is fine. Get there as early as you can and get as far off the road as you can. Its incredibly dusty and it will be packed with people in trucks/SxS's going WAY too fast and kicking dust up literally day and night.

 

Good gawd is there anyplace a man can go and lose himself for a while. If I ever win the lottery big I'm gonna buy 10,000 acres and
finance a private army to keep people out.

 

Its just the worst time of the year right now. When it first gets hot in the valley people escape to the rim. The farther you go the less crowded it is but Woods Canyon Lake is literally the closest rimtop recreation site to the valley.

 

Milky way shoot is best if you wait for new moon towards the end of the month

 

its non motorized, as are all the trails you can see in that area

 

Yea I know... wife made the reservations before I had a say. Still want to try for something tho... hopefully it won't cloud up either.

 

Spent a few days there - nice place - all pavement through woods canyon road. Nice wide smoothish dirt
if you go straight to another lake 12 miles or so ( 300 ). Campground was nice but parking spots for campers
was small. Camp sites themselves where quite large. By the way, if you go, bring your own water. There is a small
store there a gallon is $1.99 and I had to buy it, the water coming out for general use was tan/brown....

Probably 50% of families had kids under the age of 10, running around screaming but all in all it was nice. Planning
another trip in July and August to shoot the Milky Way... if anyone plans a camping trip I got a list of some of the
nicer camp spots.

For those who fish, I saw lots of people catching trout one dude had 14.



Lucky to spy these fellows:

 

I don't record tracks every time I'm up there but there's a lot of roads much further back that don't get as much traffic and 90% of it is doable in a stock 2wd. The further you go back to bear canyon lake and north the less people you'll see but this time of year its PACKED. Would not recommend leaving on a Sunday lol. I've have pretty good luck up the 34 to the 75.

 

There is a reason Us northerners of az call woods canyon lake the Walmart of lakes. You get every one there and its always packed. I have camped and explores damn near every single mile and off shoot of the 300 rd. Like everyone has said the further you go back the less people you will find. I use to go to the furthest back lake which is Knoll lake but now with all the sxs more people are ending up there. I know of a dew nice spots where you will have to kind of wheel too. A stock taco taking it slow can get there but no trailers or mini vans can. So its pretty nice and secluded. The occasional SXS will show up but see you and leave. Youre a brave man staying at woodland lake.

 

I was up there mid-week knowing full well the place would fill up, and it did. I left on Saturday a day early. Not so much because of the crowds I captured my Osprey and Eagle shots and the Milky Way wasn't showing up well so I just came on back to the valley. Planning on a mid-day return endish of July and August for some milky way images and anything else I can shoot.

I read up on Bear Lake off 300 and apparently it's the wild west there with loud music, SXS traffic, out-of-control-camp-fires, gun-shots, broken glass, trash... typical sub-human activity. Perhaps I'm just getting older but I ain't got time for that mickey-mouse-he-man bullsh*t. For those reading no offense but I really don't want to hear your loud music either... you wouldn't want to listen to my stuff would ya?...

Seems harder and harder to get-away from it all... heck if I wanted to deal with loudness, gunshots, broken glass, trash, etc I'd just stay at home 'eh ?

 

Oh you picked a good time to go! And yeah bear canyon gets trashed. Its a shame. Use to be so nice back there. I hate all that stuff too and I am sure everyone else does aswell. Its why we are all broke spending money on lifts and armor to get away from those fuck sticks. If you want some recommendations from a local on where to go PM me and I will give you a few spots. But you will be sworn to secrecy. Blood oath!!!!

 

Woods Canyon area should be renamed Sycamore Creek North...

 

Almost the whole rim area now should be. Really the only time I go there now is during winter when there is snow everywhere and no one is back there.

 

ok it has been decided. The rim will now be known as sycamore north.

 

Would love to know some of the cool secret spots with the following caveats:
I'm 65 ... meaning I'm not 23 anymore ... meaning simple snafus can be life threatening to me ( ie: flats / getting stuck / going without water )
4WD, not lifted, stock tires ( ie: ez pz roads only ... see above )
Cell service of sorts would be nice in case I run out of Heart-Attack-Rescue-Pills.
Areas with nice southern exposure a plus and nice foregrounds to setup some milky way images would be super ( see image below )
PM me with info... geo coordinates even better
Oh and yea... swearing to secrecy ... I got no friends so.... there ya go. Hell I got on enemies for that matter.

 

Great photo. Let me do some digging to see what I have in the realms of the criteria you are looking for. Most of the good spots I have are usually a bit tougher to get to just because I like being away from everyone. And I am able to work if my cell phone can ring so thats usually a driving force to get me out of cell reception. Luckily most of the 300 rd will get you service if you can get to the rim. How far you willing to drive?

 

haha, yup, i pretty much quit giving people the nice spots on account of seeing them get shared, and then trashed.